Fintech Nexus Newsletter

Bloomberg reported on Friday that Chime is planning a 2025 IPO, according to "a person familiar with the matter." Chime is the largest consumer-facing fintech in the country and this blockbuster IPO has been anticipated ever since their massive 2021 funding round that valued the firm at $25 billion.

While AI seems to be everywhere these days, one place it is getting real traction is in the compliance space. There is a lot of manual, repetitive work in the compliance teams at large banks and fintechs. Hummingbird is looking to ease that burden with the launch of a new AI-based compliance tool.

You may remember a few months ago when PayPal launched Tap-to-Pay on Android for merchants using Venmo and Zettle. Yesterday, the fintech behemoth announced that the feature has now been added for iPhone users.

In lieu of a solution that stops the crimes from happening in the first place, bank reimbursement is the only source of protection.

It has been a lean legislative session in Congress for fintech. But this week some progress was made on earned wage access.

Late yesterday, we heard the news that Onfido, a pioneer in ID verification used by banks and fintechs all over the world, is going to be acquired by Entrust, a diversified security and verification company.

We learned yesterday that federal prosecutors are investigating Block for widespread compliance lapses. NBC News broke this story after interviewing a former Block employee. This person provided roughly 100 pages of documents that showed transactions involving entities in countries subject to U.S. sanctions.

When we covered the BlackRock announcement last week of their new tokenized treasuries fund I thought it was a big deal. One week in, this new investment vehicle (ticker symbol BUIDL) is proving to be quite popular. On-chain data shows that $245 million worth of BUIDL shares are now held in seven different wallets. That is the beauty of blockchain data, everything is transparent.

We learned back in February that Klarna's AI chatbot was doing the work of 700 people. Today, Klarna is reporting about its employee's internal use of AI. It's internal AI assistant, named Kiki, is answering 2,000 employee questions a day and over 87% of its employees are now using it.

This week marks one year since many fintechs thought their world was ending. Almost every venture-backed fintech company banked with Silicon Valley Bank and for three harrowing days last March, many wondered if all their non-FDIC-insured money sitting at Silicon Valley Bank would be safe.